


To Thine Own Self...

by Letterblade



Category: Tenkuu no Escaflowne | The Vision of Escaflowne
Genre: Alcohol, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Maturity of a Blueberry Scone, F/M, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 11:22:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5454773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Letterblade/pseuds/Letterblade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Hitomi returns to Gaea, Allen takes care of Celena. And after everything that happened, that is all he cares about. Isn't it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. give thy thoughts no tongue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Overlimits](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Overlimits/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by mllelaurel.

**I**

_give thy thoughts no tongue_

 

Celena grows. Not up, of course, there’s none of that left no matter how she pouts at Allen’s elbow, but out. Out from the little child days, pulling snails out of her mouth and holding her when she cried after accidentally crushing an ant. Out into learning how to dress herself, read, ride, dance. She likes exotic clothes, would dress up in something new and stare at herself in the mirror for hours. She likes riding as fast as she can sidesaddle, and Allen’s losing the argument with Millerna about whether to teach her to ride astride.

Sometimes Celena can even focus on what was in front of her without staring into the distance so long that Allen would worry what she saw. Or sleep through the night, or talk to somebody without stammering or flinching, or be around strangers without that gutwrenching wariness in her eyes. 

Allen cares for her day and night, and there is nothing else, and every time she runs, he waits consumed with worry.

The first time she asks a question Allen doesn’t know how to answer, he tells her to ask Princess Eries and tries not to sulk. 

The first time she asks a question Allen doesn’t _want_ to answer, he tells her that she doesn’t need to know, and tries not to panic.

She’s learned by now not to ask what happened after she was kidnapped.

 

* * *

 

Millerna is…distant.

The marriage had been sworn and, more importantly, Dryden crowned prince. The old king had rejected Dryden’s petition for annulment from his sickbed, but he could not entirely bind the incorrigible man to Asturia. And so he wanders, on his self-professed quest to become a man worthy of Millerna, at least as much as he could get away with between ever-increasing responsibilities. It galls Allen. Allen is not in a position to say anything. Allen stays silent. 

Millerna succumbs to a slow tide of royal duties, in between her lessons as a doctor—which she still insists upon pursuing—and when she comes to the Schezar estate, it’s often with Eries in tow, to visit Celena. The two of them, as painfully aware of Celena’s insane past as Allen is, have tried their best to be her friends. Allen is infinitely grateful, and waits upon Millerna as he would any lady visitor, never mind the queen-to-be. Millerna does not wear her wedding ring. Millerna does not look at him with shining eyes and press kisses upon him.

Allen is not in a position to say anything. Allen stays silent.

Asturia, at least, suffered relatively little during the war. Border garrisons lost, territory easily regained and held. The worst damage to Port Rampant and the slums of the capital was still nothing on the scale of Freid or Fanelia. The people will not suffer overmuch as Dryden gallivants and Millerna struggles to find her feet in something that should never have been forced upon her. Asturia is stable.

 

* * *

 

Freid is unstable. This much Allen knows from the palace scuttlebutt he catches when he visits, and from the letters he gets. There’s a faction that wants to oust Chid, even going as far as spreading the rumor that he wasn’t Mahad’s son, and take Freid to war again. Retaliation against Zaibach, now that Zaibach is crippled and alone. Freid lost a full third of its fighting force during Zaibach’s invasion, and a full third too of the rice harvest, trampled underfoot. Freid is hungry and angry like a wounded beast, and in no position to strike.

Chid writes the letters. Nearly every week. Pouring out his small heart as he tries to win his people over. He trusts his regent, and he’s been raised well, but there are things little boys will only say to their heroes. Allen aches when he reads them. Wants to fly to Freid and _fix_ this, somehow, cut down anyone who means harm to the boy. But with those rumors going around, even his presence in the country could threaten Chid’s sovereignty and his life.

Once or twice, he sets up his writing desk with a bottle of vino and a bin for the crumpled-up sheets and manages to scratch out a return letter. There are so many things he dares not say. Every word hurts.

 

* * *

 

Eries is as Eries always has been: familiar and inscrutable.

 

* * *

 

Dryden drops in at the country house one day—when Celena is in town with Millerna and Eries shopping for her winter wardrobe, at least—and Allen feels himself go cold and stiff, and drops to one knee with a muttered “sire.”

“Aaggghhh don’t you start with that too, get up.” Dryden poses with a hand on his forehead and flumps into the other armchair, the one without an owl perch beside it. Natal cracks one eye, puffs, and ignores him.

Allen grits his teeth and gets up and sits, and subjects himself to one of Dryden’s inscrutable over-the-glasses stares. “I know, I know,” Dryden says eventually. “You resent me. I wouldn’t just drop by without a reason.” He pulls out a bag from one of his ridiculous flapping layers—which he still insists upon wearing any time he isn’t in court and half the time he is—and rummages through it for a sheaf of papers. “When I have the time, which admittedly isn’t very often—and is why it took me so long to find this—I’ve been going through the information that Folken left behind, sometimes with Eries’ help. He left notes, you see, about where to find the rest of his research in the capital. We didn’t get out all of it, there was a lot of torching going on, but, well. We have what we have.”

“To what end?” Allen asks, eyes narrowing.

Dryden sighs, and takes off his glasses to wipe the clear lenses and flip up the dark ones. “I’m not stupid enough to recreate any of it, if that’s what you’re asking. Not ever. Eries and I keep it safe. I just need to understand.”

“Because that’s what you do,” Allen bites out. “Stick your nose into painful things best left buried because you need to _understand_.”

“It worked out the last time.” Dryden shrugs.

Allen drops his gaze. That—that he couldn’t quite avoid. Even knowing that it could have been all an illusion, his imagination—getting to say those things to his father’s face—he’d imagined his father so often since, and yet it had been solace—

“At any rate,” Dryden says, offering the sheaf of papers. “You have a right to this. All of it. Most of it’s about Celena, and even I wouldn’t blame you if you buried that somewhere and never looked at it. I don’t know how she’s doing or whether it’ll help.” Allen feels frozen to his bones, and doesn’t move to take it, not until Dryden adds, “Read the top page. That isn’t about Celena. It’s about you. And Hitomi.”

Allen feels his gut sink with uneasy dread. _Hitomi_. Hell. He’d never understood what he felt for her, when she was on Gaea. Even _he_ knew he was pretending that it was simple. That he’d just wanted somebody to take care of like a little sister. That once she’d turned to Van, once that blinding giddiness of kissing her had faded, there was nothing of the sort. All pretending. Irrelevant, at any rate; she is home, and she had turned to Van, and it doesn’t matter. Really doesn’t matter.

He reads the first line of the page and snorts, mouth twisting down. _Operation Golden Rule of Love_. Crazy, torturing bastards. As if.

He reads the rest and goes numb. Reads it a second time, and a third, and fortunately, by the time he picks his head up, Dryden is gone.

 

* * *

 

The blinding rage runs its course after about four or five cups of vino, during which he heaves next to a ripped-open pillow by the sofa, and the front door clicks open, and there’s a murmur of voices, and eventually, only Eries comes in. And crouches, her ear ornaments glinting in the fading light.

“We can take Celena back to the palace for the night, if you like.”

Allen groans and grinds his face into his hand, burning with shame. “Please. I’m sorry. She shouldn’t…she shouldn’t have to deal with any of this.”

Eries is quiet for a moment, and then asks, with some strange edge to her voice Allen couldn’t possibly decipher, “Would you rather we hadn’t told you?”

_We_. Well. Of _course_ she’d conspired with Dryden in this, that would be a very Eries thing to do. “ _Yes_ ,” he barks, jerking his head up to stare at her. “Would I rather have lived without knowing that my feelings, my very _heart_ , were playthings for those bastards—? _Yes_ , damn it—”

Eries watches him unflinching. He’s never raised his voice like that to a woman. _Never_. He’s the one to flinch then, violently, and bury his face in his elbow again.

“My deepest apologies, Princess Eries.”

A long silence falls, and finally Eries stands, and says quietly, “You needn’t worry about that. Send Natal if you need me. And do not kill yourself with drink. You would be missed.”

 

* * *

 

Between the sixth cup and Eries’ icy calm, his rage withers, and leaves him maudlin. He unlatches the glass patio doors and wanders outside. The very rolling grass in which they’d lost Celena, all those years ago, stretches out before him in chilly autumn moonlight. Leaves blow. The scent of woodsmoke and decay. He rambles barefoot, bottle in hand, and leans against a tree trunk, and wonders if this is what going mad would feel like. Not knowing what he had even felt, or why, or how much of it was his own heart and how much of it was Folken’s manipulation. And the poor bastard isn’t even around anymore to ask.

He can’t measure it in cups anymore, and slumps down amongst the tree roots, and wonders if Celena had hung a wind chime in her window. She’d always thought they were pretty. One bell, ringing lightly. 

He hazes out with strange dreams, of a little room with a table so low that the two women there have to kneel at it, and one is old, and one is young, and he can only see their backs, but one lock of hair springs stubbornly up…

 

* * *

 

Allen wakes in his bed, boots off, with a warm wet cloth on his forehead and the sun searing in through the window.

Everything hurts, particularly his head, and he doesn’t have the energy to do much more than groan softly for a moment before opening his eyes.

There’s a glass of water on the table next to the bed, along with some odd little white things, and the girl from his dream is sitting in a chair nearby with a book in her hands in a language he can’t read—and he feels what little color might have been left in his face drain.

Hitomi blinks over the edge of the book and puts it down with a smile. “You’re awake. I’m glad. I brought you some water and aspirin, you’ll probably want it.”

Allen stares. She’s…what, two years older by now? If time even runs the same on both worlds, and that was far too sickening a thought to have when he’s this hungover. She hasn’t grown much, though she’s grown out her hair a little, enough to scrape into a neat and tiny bundle at the nape of her neck, with a wilting chrysanthemum tucked into it. But he can see it in her face. A little less round, a little more mature. His heart pounds in rhythm with his head.

The pendant glimmers on her breast, over the folds of her—robe, dress, he can’t quite tell.

“How,” he manages, eventually.

“I saw you.” She smiles a sad sort of smile, and leaves the book on her chair to stand and hand him water and…whatever those white things were. “You were…crying out. Not just to anyone, but to me.” She shrugs just a little. “So I came. Here. Swallow these whole, they’re medicine from the Mystic Moon. Very good for headaches.”

He eyes them, uncertain, and eventually chokes them down. No less foul than normal medicine, but easier to get down than tinctures, he'll give them that. The entire glass of water disappears before he can dredge up any more words. “I thought you’d given the pendant to Van…”

“I did. I’m just borrowing it. I always figured that if I came back to Gaea, I’d land in Fanelia, and I did, but once I have this I can go pretty much anywhere.” She touches it with a fingertip, and then scoots her chair closer. “How are you?” 

“I…” Well. There’s little denying, under the circumstances, that he’s had a wretched evening. He rubs his eyes, tries to smooth down the worst of the bedhead. “I’ve been well, in truth, aside from this. Taking care of Celena.” 

“Are you still one of the Knights Caeli?”

“Technically. The crown has…given me an extended leave of absence, for her sake. Gaddes and the rest of my crew have been rebuilding on the border, I visit them when I can, but I’m not on active duty. How…how are you?”

“I’m doing well!” That smile is warm and genuine. Far moreso than anything Allen could manage. “I’m a senior—ah, that means I’m in my last year of high school. Next year I’ll be going to university to study psychology. I didn’t do _too_ badly on my exams.” She ducks her head a little. “And I’m captain of the girl’s track team at my school, and we’ve been doing very well in competition.”

“Congratulations,” he murmurs. Even if he doesn’t understand half of it. They go to school _forever_ on the Mystic Moon, apparently. 

“Ah, thank you!” She bows slightly. 

“I’ve never…seen you dressed like that.”

She laughs. “It’s our traditional dress, in my country. We only wear it for festivals and such, and sometimes not even then, but Granny loves kimono fashion, so she likes dressing me up. We went to a festival last night together.” Hitomi stands to twirl, a wash of painted pink silk sleeves that hang to her waist, dotted with flowers, and a wide tight sash standing up in a butterfly bow on her back. She’s—beautiful, beautiful like he’d never seen before, and he can’t trust a single thing he feels.

There’s a pinwheel tucked into her sash.

 

* * *

 

He pulls himself together, gets food and a clean uniform and brushes out his hair as Hitomi excuses herself to study, and eventually, as his headache fades and the morning grows, he settles carefully in his favorite chair, and there she is in the guest chair, and it’s becoming harder and harder to avoid.

Especially when she looks him up and down and asks, “What happened?” in some quiet, gentle tone that doesn’t even make him want to run.

He still doesn’t know where to start, and flounders, and pets Natal until she nips fussily at his fingertips. “You said…I was calling out to you?”

“Mm. I just knew.” She sighs. “It’s hard to explain, I suppose.”

“You have powers all your own.” He closes his eyes, eventually, and offers, “I learned something. Something which I didn’t want to know, and which made me question…many things. It. Involves you too.”

“Then tell me,” she says, wonderfully calm. And at his hesitation, adds, “Allen. If there’s anything I learned during my time on Gaea, it’s that I’m not able to live as freely as I’d like, or without hurting others, unless I understand myself as best as I can. When there are things I don’t realize, or don’t admit to myself…I mess up.”

“There’s little to mess up. I’m not exactly a part of your life.”

“You were. And you’re still important to me. Please.”

He bows his head in acknowledgement, fights down dread, and rummages for that piece of paper. Offers it cautiously. “This—this was in Folken’s notes. Dryden’s apparently been going through them, which is a terrible idea…”

“Folken’s,” she murmurs, distant, and takes it with care. “It might be, it might not be. I’ll talk with him about it. But what does it have to do with…”

Her voice trails off as she reads, and she folds her hand over her mouth for a moment, and mostly looks sad and tired. And looks up at him, and rubs her eyes, and says “oh,” very softly, and looks away. 

“Hitomi…I’m sorry.”

Her brow furrows and she looks back at him. “You don’t need to be. God, you don’t need to be. I’m glad you told me. I really am. Thank you. And I guess it explains why you…returned my feelings, all of a sudden, and then stopped. I’d always wondered about that.”

_All of a sudden_. Allen feels uneasy, and like he should protest that, but can’t bring himself to.

“I do wish you’d told me,” Hitomi murmurs.

“I had no idea! Please believe me. Not about this. Not until yesterday.”

“I mean…that you wanted to break it off. Back then. I just sort of assumed you’d backed off because of everything else that was going on, but you never talked about it…” 

Allen sighs and slumps in his chair. “I realized…once everything was over and I had Celena back, I realized that. That it felt like I’d been looking for her, and not you. That I’d just wanted my little sister.” 

“You kissed me,” Hitomi points out, almost gently.

“I was manipulated into kissing you! Not that I knew it at the time. No, I…I didn’t even know how to say it, after that, without sounding abominable. I just felt it. I…”

Hitomi lets out a faint wail and claps both hands over her mouth.

“…Hitomi?” 

“A reaction of fortune,” she blurts, muffled.

“What?”

She takes one deep, shaky breath, and peels her hands off her face. “A reaction of fortune. Like—like what happened to Nariya and Eriya, after their fates were altered.”

“Hitomi, you’re not making sense—”

“Fate is…it’s like a…” She flaps her hands, clearly casting about. “It’s like a slingshot. If you pull it really far in one direction, but then that hold breaks, it snaps back in the other direction before landing back where it started. That’s why big fate alterations tend to go really, really badly—that and people’s inner selves getting in the way, but—but, Allen. If you can’t make sense of what you felt then, it could be as much a result of our fates being altered as the…the time you kissed me.” She blurts out the last slightly pink. 

Allen sorts through that all, and shudders violently. “You’re staying that…that I can’t trust anything I felt for you. Whether or not it was real.”

Hitomi’s eyes widen, and she sits up very straight. “Perhaps then. Not now. All those machines are gone. Whatever ripples they caused would’ve died down not long afterwards. Your feelings are entirely your own now.”

Allen feels his hand clutching the arm of his chair, white-knuckled. That should be a relief, shouldn’t it? Yet somehow it leaves him uneasy still.

“Allen…this all really troubles you. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t like the idea that Zaibach could mess with my heart. My most personal feelings. Of course I don’t.” He forces himself to relax, pretend he’s calm even if he’s not, like he always does. “And it’s…humiliating. That I didn’t realize I was under attack.” 

“Neither did I, and I’m pretty good at sensing that sort of thing. Allen, you don’t need to carry responsibility for that. Or any of it.”

Allen tries a little desperately to figure out exactly why he cannot accept that. “I took advantage of you.”

“Brainwashing!” She puffs out her cheeks, and looks as young as when they first met for a moment, and it gives him some odd pang of nostalgia. “Besides, it’s not like I didn’t have the _hugest_ crush on you, like since the moment we met.”

He stares at her.

She stares back, face growing redder and redder.

“…did you even realize?” she mumbles eventually, crumpling.

“You. Didn’t act unusually?”

Hitomi sits in slack-mouthed silence for a moment, and then buries her face in her hands. “Right. No. I suppose I didn’t act differently from _any other_ girl would around you because you are too handsome to _exist_. Allen. Do you ever kiss girls, or do they just kiss you?”

“I would never have presumed to approach a princess,” Allen protests, feeling shame heat his own body.

“Oh, Allen,” Hitomi breathes, and slowly peeks at him over her fingertips. He has no idea why she sounds so sad. Perhaps she didn’t like, even now, to be reminded of his embarrassing past? “You’re not…actually very good at relationships, are you?”

Allen opens his mouth, closes it, and feels his stomach drop to his toes.

“Oh, no, I’m sorry. That…probably sounded awful, I didn’t mean it like that. I just didn’t realize…”

Allen turns his face away from her and stares out the window, hair sliding over his cheek, and doesn’t even know what to make of that until he, slowly, realizes the truth.

“Neither did I.”

 

* * *

 

Hitomi stays a few more hours, during which they manage to avoid any further disasters—though it comes close when she asks after Millerna, and seems oddly invested in knowing whether Allen had talked to her, which of course he has, they see each other quite often—but eventually she has to leave. Her family will miss her. Responsibilities. They say their goodbyes, and she says she’ll try to visit more now that entrance exams are over, and she tucks her book in her long sleeve and heads out to the lawn and holds her pendant, and light roars up around her.

He waves as she rises, and feels a deep, strange ache in his chest, so real that he wonders for a moment if he’s somehow still sick from all that vino. Then he realizes it feels familiar. Standing in the honor guard as Marlene boarded the airship to Freid. Standing in the honor guard as Millerna and Dryden glided by. He hates himself for thinking it. Hates himself more for thinking it _now._  

He draws his sword and raises it in salute, and it all, as always, amounts to nothing.


	2. beware of entrance to a quarrel

**II**

_beware of entrance to a_ _quarrel_

 

 

Celena finds the pinwheel that fell out of Hitomi’s sash in the living room, and tears about the garden with it laughing as Allen and the two sisters talk inside. He offers his heartfelt apologies to Eries, who accepts them with little fuss. Millerna asks after the pinwheel, so he explains Hitomi’s visit. It’s all terribly awkward.

Eventually Eries drags out of him that he was, in the end, glad he knew. And then closes the trap when she asks, with no more fuss than she would about the weather, if he thinks it would be the same for Celena.

He stares out the window at her, spinning with the pinwheel in a great whirl of her skirts, and feels far, far more fear than he felt at the point of Balgus’ sword, an inch from death. He does not want to hurt her further. _Cannot_. He would never be able to forgive himself. But he does not know how to _not_ hurt her.

 

* * *

 

They prevail, eventually. They tell her, all together, for strength. Though even Eries chickens out of doing it all at once. The details of what she’d done, of what kind of person Dilandau had been, get parceled out, over time.

It is a difficult month.

He had expected her to be frightened, in pain, confused, doubting everything she was. And she is, of course. He hadn’t expected her to be _angry_ , and it glimmers through unexpected cracks like fire, and makes him water-legged with fear that he really _is_ going to lose her. But her eyes never change.

She—wouldn’t be the only Schezar who gets terribly angry when they’re upset, he supposes.

At some point during the first week, Celena corners him and plasters herself against his chest, hugs him painfully tight, and whispers, “If you had never told me, I would have hated you,” and he squeezes his eyes closed and holds her gently and tells himself that he hadn’t, in the end, destroyed her. Tells himself that is all he needs to survive this.

It is, mostly.

 

* * *

 

One full moon, Allen makes sure Celena is sleeping comfortably, and goes for a ramble on the house grounds. Only a cup or two of vino this time. He can never afford to get really plastered these days, not with how Celena wakes up screaming sometimes, and he grudgingly admits that’s probably good for him.

It had never occurred to him, here in this quiet, out-of-the-way house, that there could be another reason to stay sober.

The man standing on the moonlit field is young, round-faced, and utterly unassuming. Except for the uniform of a Basram footsoldier, a long way from home. And two mid-length, strangely curved blades at his waist, a matching pair, old and well-wrought and hardly Basram standard issue.

Allen feels a chill prickling his spine, and drops a hand to rest on the hilt of his own sword—at least he hadn’t yet bothered to peel out of his own uniform. Basram isn’t on good terms with Asturia these days, not after the stunt they’d pulled at the Battle of Galfo. There are worse terms, certainly—Dedalus and Cesario are both in outright war with Basram after the losses they’d suffered—but Asturia has piled on trade sanctions, and spies from any country are always a concern.

“You are on the lands of a Knight Caeli of Asturia. State your intent.”

“Balgus Ganesha’s pupil, Allen Schezar.” The fellow smiles, pleasantly enough, but there’s a strange intensity to his presence that sets Allen’s nerves on edge. “I wish to test my strength against yours.”

Allen lifts his chin, stands still and stony-faced, even more suspicious. “How did you know that I am Balgus’ pupil? Were you once his enemy?”

“No.” The man draws one of his swords, the left. Dark steel glimmers in the moonlight. “Stand and draw, boy.”

_Boy_. The fellow looks no older than Van. “And what will you do if I do not? I have more important things to do than risk my life on foolish duels.”

“Nothing. But.” The stranger locks eyes with him, and Allen can sense a warrior’s spirit like no other. At least like no other he’s felt since Balgus. “Stop running.”

Allen’s hand tightens on his sword hilt, and his veins feel like ice. He wants to protest. Cannot bring himself to. How much of his life has he spent running? Avoiding? Not even knowing what he’s facing?

Allen slides his sword free of the sheath, and slowly takes guard, heart pounding. A wild wind blows, and clouds scud, and the Mystic Moon comes out glimmering bright, and he wonders if Hitomi is dreaming of this too, and charges.

The first sally proves this strange boy is not weak. The second proves he is not a fool. They test, feint, hold back, circle. The other sword remains at his hip, and Allen rankles at the blatant disregard, drives him far and hard across the lawn, until he grins a sharp grin and draws both. And strikes like a whirlwind, driving Allen to his knees and slicing one of his sleeves open, close enough to shave his arm without drawing a single drop of blood.

Allen skids to a landing in the grass, gritting his teeth. Where is the calm in battle that Balgus had taught him of? How can he possibly be faltering _now_? He has killed, he has faced death. He’s not green like Van. Allen shakes his hair back, gets his legs under him, leaps with a kiai. The battle speeds up, furious. Allen falls back, changes his stance as if he faces two men at once, regroups. Two swords, even if it is only one man, though the brutal speed and strength in him is worth two. Who could he possibly be, this unremarkable boy from Basram, with skill like this? Their military training favors defense, archery, and explosives, not this sort of blinding assault. A sword skims his cheek, his thigh, his bicep, razor sharp—the man’s control is breathtaking. Infuriating. Allen feels like a raw cadet. Like a child, flailing desperately at Balgus’ blade. He is hollow where he’d once found himself strong. He is—

_I’m not able to live as freely as I’d like, or without hurting others, unless I understand myself as best as I can._

—Hitomi flashes across his mind’s eye like lightning.

The stranger has him backed against a tree, blade locked with one of his swords while the other comes in low. Allen’s mind goes clear. Twist. Deflect. One foot to use the tree as leverage, push forward, break free. Elbow following the motion of his blade, catching the stranger hard across the forearm, forcing him to drop that sword. Half disarmed, form broken. Allen drives forward, hard, steel sparking as the stranger switches seamlessly back to a single-bladed form. But the reach advantage is his now. He can’t beat the stranger in speed, but if he learns his pattern, predicts it—

The second sword goes flying. The stranger stops, an easy smile on his face, barely out of breath, as the tip of Allen’s sword hovers before his eyes.

“You’re good.” Allen swallows, heaves for air. Strands of his hair are stuck to his face. He’s—more tired than he should ever be, from facing just one man. It seems like they’ve been fighting for hours. “I’ll give you that. But I think you owe me some explanations.”

“As are you,” the stranger says, uncannily calm. “I’m glad. If I’d been able to defeat you without even using my true strength, I’d be rather disappointed.”

“True strength?” Allen echoes, eyes narrowing. He’s _still_ holding back? What kind of man—?

The stranger raises his hands, and they blur, and lengthen, and harden, and the pit drops out of Allen’s stomach. He leaps back as far as he can, bites down instinctive, revulsive fear, raises his sword in guard. The unassuming young face bleeds, fades into zebra stripes and acid-green eyes, and Allen hisses, “Doppleganger.”

Death rushes at him in a lanky black-and-white blur, and Allen fights defensively, desperately. Tries not to remember the empty husks such creatures leave behind, the way they consume one’s entire _self_. So this really is an assassination. Had one of the old Asturian lords finally decided he’s too much trouble? Strange for it to come now, and not in the wake of Marlene or his other scandals. He’d been quiet, alone. Unless—

—unless this creature’s true goal is Celena. Any number of people would want her dead, if they knew the truth. Bring up Balgus to lure him into a false sense of security, and strike…

Desperation gives him speed, even with his lungs burning, but it isn’t enough. Desperation gives him strength, even with his limbs trembling, but it isn’t enough. The Doppleganger fights with impassive, overwhelming skill, thick gray braids swirling as it dances across Allen’s darkening vision. Blocks strikes on his blades and then retracts them, sending Allen stumbling with his own follow-through. Then extends them to fence him in, drive him out of reach. Allen gives ground, leads it—maybe, just maybe, if he can get within range of the house, he can raise the alarm, give Celena a chance to run—

He hears her scream, raw as fire in the night.

“Run! Celena, run! I’ll hold it off, just go as fast as you ca—”

He barely even has the air to call to her. Sword across his chest, laying his shirt open, a thin trickle of blood. Even now, even now the creature strikes so lightly. Let it. If this is a death of a thousand cuts for sheltering Dilandau, he’ll take every one if it means his sister has time to run. He grits his teeth, digs in his heels, heaves his too-heavy blade into purely defensive forms.

“Monster!” He can hear the door open. The door close. Celena’s voice, ragged with fear as raw as her nightmares. And rage. No, no, no… “You monster! I won’t let you hurt him! I’ll never forgive you if you hurt him don’t you _dare_ touch Brother!”

Running. Towards them. Allen feels sick with fear. “GO!” It’s the last of his air. Living blades catch his sword between them, twist, and it flies. Allen stumbles. The next blow knocks him flat on his back, dew soaking through the remnants of his uniform. Celena’s bare feet scuffing through the grass. The grass in which he’d lost her once, is about to lose her again, and for a moment, he can only wish that he’ll die swiftly. So his last sight wouldn’t be—this. Celena running up with a desperate scream, tiny and bare-armed in her nightdress, clutching Allen’s sword two-handed like she doesn’t even know how to swing it—yet it would be worse if she did, wouldn’t it, it would be worse if those thin arms bore a man’s battle-honed muscles—

The Doppleganger catches her wild strike, bare-handed on the blade. His own blades gone in an instant. Thin, purplish blood trickles from his white palms. More blood than Allen has managed to draw from him.

“I am not here to fight you, child,” he says, quite calmly, his natural voice deep and rich and strange. “Nor to take either of your lives. Be at peace.”

Allen lolls in sheer exhaustion and claws at the grass as she shrieks and wails and struggles. “Monster, monster, I can’t forgive you…”

“You’ve fought my kind before,” the Doppleganger murmurs. “I know we can be frightening. But…”

Celena jolts with a wail, and drops the hilt of the sword. Clamps both shaking hands over her face and sinks to her knees. “I…haven’t,” she chokes. “ _I_ haven’t. B…Brother…? Brother…?”

Allen drags himself up to sitting, sick with fear and bewilderment, and reaches for her. “I’m here. I’m all right. Celena…”

She flings herself against him, face stained with tears and the blood from his chest, and sobs, and he holds her for what seems like forever, and stares up at the Doppleganger standing in unarmed silence over them both, and tries to clear his mind.

“My name is Lig Vieta,” the Doppleganger says, once Celena’s wails ease a little. “Balgus was my brother in arms.”

Allen keeps staring for a long moment, realization creeping in like a strange balm. “You’re…one of the Master Swordsmen of Gaea.”

 

* * *

 

They go in. They clean themselves up. Allen’s wounds are trivial, barely deeper scratches than he’d get from a rosebush, if long. Celena cries herself out and settles into red-eyed exhaustion, wiping her face.

Allen can barely bring himself to let go of her hand. He’d gotten the gist of what happened with the Doppleganger Zaibach had sent to Freid. Certainly enough to know whose rage and grief that had been. This…this was new. Would she start remembering? Allen churns with fear, forces his face to remain calm, stands next to where Celena’s crumpled in his armchair and faces down the Doppleganger in his living room.

“I did not mean to involve you, child,” Lig says, when they’re settled. “I give you my word of that. But now I have seen how closely you have chosen to bind your fates, I cannot be surprised.”

Celena’s quiet for a moment, twining an ash-blonde curl around her fingertip, and then says, hesitant, “I’m…sorry I freaked out. I’d never…felt anything like that before. Not that I…not that I can remember…” She flounders, and Lig simply nods.

“I can get some sense of how your fate has been changed, child. A dirty business. You need not trouble yourself to explain it.”

“…my name’s Celena. Celena Schezar.”

Lig inclines his head, reserved.

“What _was_ your goal, then?” Allen asks, still wary.

“As I said. To test you. I’m assuming Balgus did not tell you much of us.”

“No. I didn’t even hear it from his mouth. Only a rumor, once I became a Knight Caeli, that there was a brotherhood of Master Swordsmen, that Balgus was one.”

“One of three. A human, a Doppleganger, a Junin. Adama Ish and I barely visit the human lands, for obvious reasons, but we have our own countries, our own business. There is far more of Gaea than the humans often travel, after all.”

“And you did not come forth even when all of Gaea was in danger two years ago?”

“We discussed it, when we sensed Balgus’ death. Adama wanted to let the humans burn if it was their will—he holds little goodwill towards your kind. I considered it, but delayed overlong. My apologies, that I did not openly lend my aid.”

_Openly_. Well, Doppleganger. “But you’re here now just to pick fights.”

“I am here to search for Balgus’ successor.”

Allen stares for a moment, and Celena’s head comes up with a little squeak. “Successor?”

“Our brotherhood is many generations old. Sometimes an immediate successor presents himself; sometimes he does not. I decided I wished to search. I learned that Balgus had taken two human pupils. But one is sworn to his land and kingdom, and is not, I think, human after all, which makes it rather impossible. So before wandering aimlessly amongst the human masses, I came to see if you had any strength.”

Celena’s looking up at them both wide-eyed. “You think Brother could be…?”

Lig looks Allen up and down slowly, in careful consideration, and Allen feels nerves tingle down his spine. Just like Balgus after all.

“Your body and skills are strong enough, for a man of your age and training who has not yet learned how Gaea can answer his wishes. Strong enough to defeat me without me restoring to my true form, and even Balgus could rarely best me when I did.” He shrugs. “Dopplegangers have certain advantages.” He reaches out a bony white finger to tap Allen in the chest, and Celena tenses. “Your stumbling blocks lie here. You sabotage yourself. You do not understand yourself. You stand at a crossroads in your life, and have begun to question all that you are. You must find those answers. And they may or may not be answers which lead you down this path. It is open to you, should you wish to attempt it. But I must warn you that if you attempt it as you are now, you will die.”

Celena’s hand goes white knuckled in his, and he squeezes back, trying to comfort her. “I no longer seek death as I did when I met Balgus. Why? Why would it end that way, as I am now?”

Lig narrows his searing green eyes for a moment, and says, eventually, “For the same reason the Zone of Absolute Fortune brought death. To be a Master Swordsman is to come closer to Gaea’s nature than most ever even imagine. If your wishes are in conflict, she will bring conflict upon you, until it swallows you whole.”

Allen frowns, lost. “Balgus was a warrior. He did not fear conflict.”

“Nor did he wish for it.” Lig draws himself up. “Think on it, but do not seek me unless it truly, in the deepest of your senses, seems the right thing to do. It will be a hard road for you. You are a good man, and you are well-loved. I have no wish to lead you to your death.” He withdraws a step, gives a cursory bow, and turns to leave. “I shall impose on you no further. I only regret that our duel was more unpleasant than it should have been.”

“Wait,” Celena whispers. And then squirms her hand out of Allen’s and rushes to her feet, scampering after him. “Wait, please!”

Lig looks over his shoulder. “Yes?”

“You said…you said you could sense. What happened to my fate. Can you tell me…who I would have been, if that hadn’t happened? What my fate was supposed to be?”

He turns, and studies her. “There is no such thing as predestined fate. Only the flow of it. What use could you have for would-have-been? You are who you are now. I understand that is hard to carry, but it is yours.”

She fists both her hands in her nightdress, shaking a little, and then blurts out, “But I don’t know who that is! I don’t know how to be Celena anymore, or if there even is a Celena. And maybe I know a little more of how to be…h- _him_ …than I thought, but I don’t _want_ to be him.”

He’s quiet for a moment, and Allen ventures up behind her, heart in his throat. “Celena…”

“I’m…I’m all right, please let me talk to him…”

“You fear your anger,” Lig says eventually.

“…yes,” Celena admits, voice small, head bowed.

Silence stretches.

“Potential can be altered,” Lig says. “Fettered, increased. Potential cannot be added where there is none. You are a bowl of red and blue crystals that has been divided, into two bowls under the lie of two different names.”

“So I…I would have been awful, even if they hadn’t…changed me.” Celena’s voice is tiny, and Allen’s heart tries to shatter in his chest, and he drags her into his arms.

“No. No! I refuse to believe that. You’re kind, you’re incredibly sweet, you always have been—”

“Kindness tempers anger,” Lig says, as if it’s painfully simple. “Anger tempers kindness. Such it is in most people. You may well have been headstrong. Proud. Rebellious. Perhaps even a warrior. Probably not cruel. But do not believe the lies that they constructed you with. The red does not negate the blue, nor is it stronger.”

Celena shakes for a long moment in Allen’s arms, and he strokes her hair and glares daggers at Lig’s impassive face. Finally she mumbles something into his shirt, so faint that she has to pick up her head and ask again. “Are there…any purple ones?”

Lig tilts his head, and for a moment, Allen almost wonders if that’s a smile on his thin lips. “Of course. In truth, they were all purple once.”

 

* * *

 

Neither of them talks about it afterwards. Lig vanishes into the forest, saying only that Allen will be able to find him if he needs to. They sleep, wake, go about their day as if everything is normal. Two days. Three.

Allen gnaws on Lig’s words like a dog on a bone. Why the Zone of Absolute Fortune had failed. He’s no fool, he’s heard Hitomi explain it well enough—that people’s wishes hadn’t all been for peace. Especially deployed in the middle of a battle, curse that fool emperor. But Allen does not wish to die, nor cause needless battle. Had Lig underestimated him so? Would simply wishing…not be enough?

He gnaws in circles, and so, he can only guess, does Celena, though she does not speak of it much. She lingers deep in thought for a day or two. Goes to the city with Millerna, returns, mills. Allen realizes he has no idea what’s going on inside her. That he’s afraid of it, profoundly. Terrified that Celena would be changed, warped, lost. He can’t entirely bring himself to believe what Lig had said, that Dilandau could possibly have been sculpted from _any_ part of Celena’s nature.

He startles, one morning, at the pillar of light blooming in the garden, and relief washes over him like balm.

 

* * *

 

Hitomi’s in more familiar clothes this time, uniform and sneakers, with a tidy little knapsack as if she’d planned this visit. Celena squeaks, wide-eyed, and has to be reintroduced—they’d only met so briefly, with Celena still very disoriented—and Hitomi smiles warm and kind, with no reservations, and hugs her.

“I had the sense something big happened.”

Celena hesitates, and looks over her shoulder to Allen, and Allen tamps down hard on _any_ thoughts of her last visit and says, instead, “We had…an unexpected visitor.”

 

* * *

 

Once they tell the story, Celena tugs on Hitomi’s sleeve and whispers that there’s more, and they drift into her room. Allen sighs—Millerna has trained him to accept ladies’ time—and goes to get some semblance of lunch together. An hour passes. Three. Five. He paces and worries and seriously considers climbing the walls or knocking, until Natal sits on him and naps with insistent finality.

At last Hitomi emerges, stretching, and Allen jolts up in a puff of owl. “Celena—?”

“She’s fine, she’s taking a nap. We can make sure she gets something to eat when she wakes up.” Hitomi smiles, and her eyes seem damp. “Sorry that took so long. She’s…got a lot on her mind.”

Allen scrapes up the cold lunch, and wishes he’d known she was coming so that he could have the cook in, and eventually, about halfway through, asks, quietly, “Hitomi…is she remembering?”

Hitomi carefully finishes her bite of sandwich and sets it down. “A little. Impressions, more than anything else. Miguel and Zongi…their names meant nothing to her, even after I told her the whole story. But seeing somebody she loves in danger from a Doppleganger stirred up feelings.”

“Is it—new? Do you think it’ll get worse?”

“Yes, and…I don’t know.” She contemplates her sandwich at length. “Does she get along with Van?”

Allen nods, slowly, worry gnawing at his gut. He hasn’t even considered that. Worried about what Van would think of her, certainly but not the other way around, and Van hasn’t been unpleasant about it. “They’ve only met a few times, but yes.”

Hitomi nods. “So when both of them have strong feelings about something…I don’t think it will happen very often. Most of Dilandau’s strong feelings weren’t something Celena can identify with.” She’s quiet for a moment, eats a little more, and then says, “That could change with time. There’s a lot that could happen. But I believe in her. She’s become very strong. Probably stronger than she or anybody else realizes.” Allen wonders if that’s a gentle dig at himself, and opens his mouth to fuss, and then Hitomi says, “Allen, can I ask something of you, to help her?”

“Anything,” Allen says, more earnestly than he’s said anything in a long time. At Hitomi’s request, to help Celena? _Anything._

“Believe in her?”

Allen blinks. “Of—of course I believe in her. Hitomi, what are you—”

“Believe in her strength. In her choices, and what she wants to do.” Hitomi wraps her hands around her cup of tea and looks at him steadily. “Allen, when we were in Atlantis, I realized something. Or a few people told me, I wasn’t quite sure.” She smiles faintly. “ _Atlantis_ , it was strange. But…” She closes her eyes for a moment, as if searching for words, and then looks back at him. “You and Van. I was worried sick about both of you. After everything that had happened, and all your injuries…I kept imagining more terrible things. I’d have bad dreams, I’d see dangerous cards in my readings and freak out. I could barely even tell anymore how much of it would come true and how much of it was me worrying. And maybe…maybe fate couldn’t tell either.”

Allen barely follows, shakes his head slowly. “We’re warriors, both Van and I. Injuries are part of what we undertake. But…but what are you saying? That because you were worried, we were in more danger? That’s ridiculous.”

Hitomi smiles a bright, strange smile that doesn’t seem very happy at all. “People respond to your wishes. _Fate_ responds to your wishes.” She takes a long drink of her tea. “It wasn’t just that I was worried. It’s hard _not_ to worry about somebody you love, and I still worry about you all. But when you forget how strong they are, when you forget how they’ve survived up until now, worry means you’re doubting them, and thinking they won’t survive. So instead, you have to believe in them. I know I’m asking a lot. It wasn’t easy for me to realize all this. But even if it sounds strange, it’s true.”

_If your wishes are in conflict, she will bring conflict upon you, until it swallows you whole._

The surface of Allen’s tea has little ripples in it.

Hitomi reaches out and folds her hands over his, and he almost chokes at her touch.

“Are you saying…that I’ve been hurting her?”

“I don’t think so. She’s been safe, and happy, and she loves you very much. But she…she doesn’t want to hide from everything forever. And I know you want to help her.”

“More than anything.”

“So…”

“I’ll do my best. I don’t…understand this sort of thing very well.” It feels terrible to admit it, raw and naked, but Hitomi just smiles gently.

“You’ll be all right. I believe in you too, you know!” She squeezes his hand, very lightly, and lets go so she can finish her lunch. “You seem like you’ve been pretty down recently.”

How does she keep _doing_ this? It’s—strange. Different from how she’d been when they were traveling together before. More confident. Like she _knows_ him, inside out, instead of—hovering in his wake with the hugest crush, apparently.

Just like Millerna.

He feels like he should dislike how Hitomi is now. Or be frightened, or be upset with her for being out of line. Or…something. But Hitomi has never really been good at _should be_ , has she?

“Taking care of Celena is more important right now,” he says eventually, by way of answer, somewhat numb.

“Mm. She wouldn’t want you to be unhappy, though.”

He has no idea what he’s meant to do with that, and hedges. “I thought you’d be asking me whether I was going to take Lig Vieta up on his offer.”

Hitomi shrugs a little. “I know why he said what he did, about being ready. And, like you said, Celena. But, Allen…I think if you wanted to become ready, you could. It won’t be easy, but you’re stronger than you know.”

Was he truly?

_I believe in you._

 

* * *

 

It isn’t until she’s rising into the sky again that he realizes what she’d said when she was talking about Atlantis. _It’s hard not to worry about somebody you love._

He can’t read too much into it. He tells himself that, very firmly, and puts an arm around Celena’s shoulders as she holds white-knuckled to his sleeve.


	3. be true

**III**

_be true_

 

Months pass.

Grava Aston, holding onto life with greedy withered fingertips all these years, finally slips.

Allen stands in the honor guard again as Millerna and Dryden glide by, this time for the coronation, and his chest feels like an infected wound with the pus being squeezed out. Celena stands in attendance on Millerna, alongside Eries in special honor, in a froth of white lace tailored just for the occasion, embroidered with purple butterflies and with her chin held high. They both look radiant. Dryden looks terrified, although he hides it well; at least he’s shaved. Eries looks the same as always.

Allen stays in Pallas for the next week and change, taking advantage of the standing offer of rooms in the palace, and Celena stays with him. She orbits him, he eventually notices, like Natal in flight, never deigning to seek guidance, but never letting him out of her sight either. She tires of social functions far faster than he does, but flits about exploring the palace and uncannily ferreting out the court eccentrics.

She seems—no less sane than she did after Hitomi’s last visit. More sane, perhaps. She’s gaining confidence. Focus. A brightness in her eyes like she’s starting to fly, and Allen doesn’t know whether to be happy that she’s flying or terrified that she’ll fall.

He’s starting to understand what Hitomi meant, though.

 

* * *

 

After one of the endless functions, sipping vino at long narrow tables, Allen catches Millerna watching him, and stiffens, and remains calm. She’s wearing her wedding ring again. He hasn’t seen enough of her about the palace to know whether she’s doing so just to avoid awkward questions or—always.

She calls him to her with a quick word and a tilt of the head, and leads him up spiral staircases to the roof. It’s a warm, breezy night, dew-damp and luscious. The moons hang low and vast in the starry night. Was it upon this very rooftop that they’d first kissed? It feels—long ago.

“This is nostalgic,” he ventures, utterly at a loss.

She smiles up at him, rather sadly. The ribbon-and-gem is gone from her forehead, in lieu of a tiara in her blonde curls; without that, and in proper dress, she looks far older. Matured into graciousness. So much like Marlene. But he’s never noticed how different their eyes are before.

“Allen,” she starts, and then shakes her head and paces to the rampart, leaning on the worn stone and surveying the city. _Her_ city. “Oh, look at me. I’ve dragged you up here, and I have no idea how to start.”

“Is there…something you need of me, Pri—Your Majesty?”

“Oh blessed _dragons,_ please don’t call me that, it’s too strange.” She sounds so much like Dryden that Allen’s heart performs some strange gymnastics. “I just…” She splays one silk-gloved hand firmly on the rampart as if to brace herself, and turns to face him. “I feel as if I’ve done you a disservice.”

Allen blinks, even more lost, and then shakes his head. “I cannot even imagine what disservice you could have done to me. Rather I had wondered if I have displeased you.”

She hides her face in her other hand for a moment. “No.” And looks up at him. “Allen…I did not know what I was feeling, for the longest time, after Dryden left. I wasn’t sure whether I was finally having feelings for him, or whether I could let myself have feelings for you after I found out about Marlene and Chid. I couldn’t get you out of my mind! But…”

She stutters to a halt as Allen drops to one knee, bowing his head. “I offer you my deepest apologies.”

“No,” she croaks, and then, after a moment, “Allen, I hold no grudge against you that needs my forgiveness. Get up. If that must be a royal order, then it is.”

Allen feels his eyes widen, and rises mechanically, and feels the breath leave his chest as Millerna hugs him. A wash of silk and tumbling hair, fitting so snugly against him, as always, and he dares not hug back.

Then Millerna pulls back, and looks up at him with terrible grief, and says, “I thought I loved you, so much.”

“Millerna…”

“But I…I barely knew who you were. I loved my idea of you. My handsome knight. And I—I took advantage of you,” she blurts, as if it is very difficult to say. “Of your kindness, of your loneliness. I didn’t even realize. So…I’m sorry. I want you to be happy, Allen. You’re one of the dearest people in my life, and you deserve someone who sees you and loves you for who you are, and I…I don’t think that’s me. Even if I wasn’t… _here_ , wedded and queen.”

She’s grown, Allen thinks distantly. Her and Hitomi and Celena, all growing, so fast. He isn’t entirely sure he understands what she’s saying. Wasn’t he the one who’d—taken advantage of her? Her and Marlene both? Out of…loneliness. His loneliness. He’s beginning to understand that much.

“I hold no grudge against you that needs my forgiveness,” he murmurs, eventually.

Millerna’s face crumples.

“Oh, Allen…” She rubs at her eyes for a moment. “What do _you_ want? Do you ever let yourself want things, really?”

“I wish for your happiness,” he murmurs. Familiar. A platitude. But—true, he realizes. One of the truest things he’s ever said to her. “You’re probably right. That I’m lonely. But I have no right to involve you in that.” He hesitates. “Are you…happy?”

She folds her hand over her heart. Wedding ring on her white silk glove, only trembling a little. “With Dryden…? Yes. It snuck up on me, but…yes.” She squeezes her eyes shut for a moment, then blurts, “Do you think me untrue? To have found that with him, even after—even after what I felt for you?”

Allen shakes his head, oddly calm. It’s—clearer, to hear all this, even if it hurts. “You cannot be untrue to what was unsworn. And it would be…the rankest of hypocrisies, for me, of all people, to question your heart.”

“Allen,” she whispers, eyes slightly damp. “Thank you.”

He takes a knee. White gloves in white, and he presses one last kiss to the royal knuckles. Old times’ sake.

 

* * *

 

Allen retreats to the family estate with the infected wound in his chest lanced, drained, packed, and bandaged, feeling weak to his knees.

He wishes dimly into the country evening that Hitomi could be there again, and does not dare make it more than an idle thought.

The next morning, when he wakes, she’s chatting with Celena in the living room, wearing those tiny short pants and sleeveless shirt of hers, a shade more tan and wiry from all her running, and he’s pretty sure he’s walked in on them deciding to try on each other’s clothes.

 

* * *

 

They talk at rambling length, about nearly everything except whether they love each other, and she rattles between Allen and Celena as Allen goes to do his daily business about the estate, and when he sees them again, they _have_ tried on each other’s clothes, and Celena is turning circles in Hitomi’s tiny short pants like an alarmed horse. “How do you just go around with your _legs_ bare? It’s cold! Everything tickles! My _knees_ feel naked!”

Allen averts his eyes on instinct, and Hitomi is half-off his guest armchair in a lace dress giggling helplessly, and for the first time he can remember, the big old house feels homely.

 

* * *

 

Hitomi stays the night, saying that she’s on some sort of vacation from her endless schooling and that her family knows she’s on a trip, so she can be there for a while. She takes off for Pallas in the morning to visit Millerna and Dryden, and it isn’t until Allen is practicing his forms on the lawn in his shirtsleeves and the fading dew—not something he’d bothered with before, but Lig Vieta wiping the grass with him has left him twitchy, worried he’s losing his strength—that he realizes Celena didn’t go with her. Instead, she’s watching—in one of her usual dresses, to Allen’s relief. Though it’s strange to see her sitting so still for so long, focusing so intently.

He finishes, and sheathes his sword, and is turning to go inside to hang it up when she stands, and slips between him and the door. “Brother…?”

“What is it?”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Anything.” He can feel his brow furrowing. She knows that! What could make her this nervous…?

“Please…” She squares her shoulders. “Please teach me how to use a sword!”

“What—” Allen takes a step back, outraged. “Goodness, _no_ , why?”

“Because I want to become stronger! I—I want to _do_ something! I’m not planning on running away and fighting or anything crazy like that, I’m seriously not, I promise. I just…”

“You’re a woman, Celena, it’s—it’s not done.”

“ _So_?!”

“So you can become more like _him_?” Allen blurts, and the anger in her eyes makes them very bright, and very blue.

“No! You really think I’d want that, even for a moment, Brother? Van told me about Fanelia!” Allen hears some choked little noise come out of his throat, and Celena grabs a double fistful of his shirt, and doesn’t pull. Van had—? Allen had no idea—how _could_ he—? “And before you get angry at him, I asked!” There’s terrible pain on her face for a moment, and then she squares her jaw. “I want to become more of _me_! Remember what Lig said? I want to learn to fight as _me_ , so that it isn’t just his forever and ever. To take it back from him, because he doesn’t get to keep things. _Zaibach_ doesn’t get to keep things. I won’t let them! If I keep being afraid of things like this, they’ll win.”

Allen’s mind goes blank for a moment. Gently, gently, he takes her by the shoulders so he can look her in the eyes. Was—was _everything_ he’d thought, about what would be good for her, wrong?

Her determination is keen as a knife. She isn’t, he thinks, one bit less herself.

_Believe in her_.

He lets her go, and her hands shake just a little as he pulls away and the fabric of his shirt slides through her fingers. He can’t face those eyes. He paces. Wrestles with himself. Stands and stares out into the field below the house.

“I won’t start you with the long blade,” he says eventually, numbly.

“Because—”

“Because of your height and experience. Wielding a long blade takes considerable strength and practice.” Dilandau, he reflects vaguely, had been rather a terrible swordsman. “You’ll learn faster and be more effective if you start with a short, one-handed sword, and learn to balance your reach with speed and maneuverability.”

Celena lets out a keen of relief and hugs him from behind, very tight.

“Thank you,” she mumbles, into his back, and Allen wonders, vaguely, if this should hurt more than it does. If he should be more afraid than he is.

 

* * *

 

Allen finds the practice swords he used as a child in the attic somewhere, and Celena marks out basic forms with the hem of her skirt swishing in the grass, eyes determined. She’s a fast learner, accurate. Her footwork is confident, after all the dancing lessons, but her arms are weak and she tires easily, and somehow that’s reassuring. No swordsman’s muscles, no calluses. Not _his_ body. She pushes herself to the point of shaking, and he knows she’ll wake up sore tomorrow, and if she keeps at it every day, she’ll be stronger.

Hitomi lands as Celena pushes through one final form before plopping down in the grass exhausted, and cheers, and fetches her cool tea as she pants, holding her blunt practice blade across her knees like it’s a treasure.

Hitomi’s quiet that evening, but he has the impression that she’s watching him, and that she’s pleased, and that’s about all he can ask for, really.

 

* * *

 

Allen can’t sleep, and sits up in his familiar chair in the living room, stroking Natal with one finger between her wings and watching the night clouds scud.

He’s not—unhappy. He feels worn thin, and strangely calm, and like things he can’t see are changing, but perhaps not in a bad way. Which is, in itself, new.

Hitomi pads in wearing one of Celena’s nightgowns, yawning, and leans against the back of his chair without fuss, elbows framing his head. “You okay?”

“I…yes. I believe so. Just thinking.”

“Did it bother you that Celena wanted to learn swords?”

“No.” He closes his eyes and lets his head sag against the armchair. Hitomi’s so close he can smell her, the grass-sun tan of her skin and the tang of strange soaps. “Well, some. Not as much as I think it should, once she explained why. It terrifies me, what she’s trying to do, but…”

Dragons protect him. Why would he admit that to Hitomi, to _anyone_?

“That’s okay,” Hitomi says, calm as always. “I know how brave you are.”

“Not when it comes to this,” Allen murmurs, raw. Is _that_ his problem, he wonders? That he clings to everything so rigidly that he drives people away, because he’s a coward? Father and Mother, Celena, Balgus, Marlene…

“You’re growing.”

He’s silent for a long moment, unsure of whether he can believe that. “Millerna spoke with me.”

“Mm?”

“About why she isn’t…with me, anymore.”

“How did it go?”

“As well as it could, I suppose.” He swallows. “She’s happy. That’s the important part. She feels bad, about what happened between us, and that bothers me. She shouldn’t have to. I…was the one who took advantage of her, and saw her sister in her. That wasn’t fair to her.”

“Have you forgiven each other, and are you still friends?”

“…yes.”

“Then you did all right. I’ve seen a lot of breakups waaaay worse than that, believe me.”

He considers that, puzzles. “Do people…have affairs more often, on the Mystic Moon?”

Hitomi laughs. “We call it dating. Like if you date a _lot_ of people, people might think you’re bad for it, especially if you’re a girl, and nobody can agree on how…uh, intimate it’s okay to get, when you’re daring. But if you date somebody for a while and then figure out it doesn’t work and marry somebody else, that’s pretty normal. We only call it an affair if one of you is married, and that’s trouble, of course, but that’s something else.”

“That sounds like a lot of hassle.”

“Well, the way you do it seems kind of a bother too,” Hitomi says lightly.

“I doubt I’d be very good at either version.”

She makes some contemplative noise into his chair, and comes around to perch on the arm of it where she can see him. “You’ve been down on yourself a lot recently.”

“I…suppose. I feel like I’m only realizing a whole number of things far too late, and then I feel like a fool.”

“Would you feel better if you hadn’t realized them?”

“Probably not. I felt…uncomfortable and worried all the time, I think. I just didn’t know why.” He sighs and contemplates the ceiling. “How _do_ you just know, Hitomi? What you’re really thinking?”

She laughs and shakes her head. “A lot of hard work, and messing up, and realizing things only when they’re shoved in my face. God, Allen, please don’t think I just knew everything all the time. _Especially_ not back then.”

He’s stunned, for a moment, and then closes his eyes with a faint smile. “That’s…strangely encouraging.”

“I’m glad! Hard work and messing up is…well, pretty much how anybody does anything, isn’t it?”

_You have permission to fail_ , Balgus had told him once, about the twentieth time he’d flung his scrawny little body howling against a particularly cunning block, and sunk muttering to the forest floor in despair. Dragons, he misses the man. Tries not to wonder whether Lig Vieta, or this mysterious Adama Ish, would be of a kind with him. It’s eerie, training Celena. He’s never had a student. Never finished learning, either…

“Hitomi…do you think Celena is doing the right thing?”

“I’m pretty sure she’s doing what will help her be happier and stronger, and beyond that, there isn’t really a right or a wrong.” Hitomi’s quiet for a moment, then, “I think…she only needs to take responsibility for being Celena. It’s not her job to get worked up about Dilandau’s cruelty, and if she feels a part of him that she wishes to make hers again, that’s her right. His fate…is over, I think.”

“It had better be,” Allen grumbles. “And…that’s true. I never wanted her to have to bear that guilt. Not for an instant. I’ll claim his crimes as his own, since he’s my blood, before letting her bear them.”

“Oh, Allen,” Hitomi breathes, in that particular sad tone that makes him open his eyes and worry at her. “They aren’t yours to bear either.”

“Then who…” Allen stops himself, sighs and rubs a hand over his face. “No, you’re right. There’s no point in taking blame for a phantom. I just can’t bear the thought of her suffering anyone else’s vengeance. At least those who know have been reasonable, once Van had a chance to calm down.”

“He often needs those, yes,” Hitomi says, not unfondly. “But…she’s safe, from the rest of the world. You’re worried that she’ll lose herself?”

“Sometimes, still. It’s hard not to be.” He’s quiet for a long, long moment, and finally admits, “I’m worried she’ll outgrow me.” And pauses. “Dragons, that sounds awful when I say it. I should want her to grow as much as she can, shouldn’t I? But instead I. I want her to keep needing me, and holding onto me, because otherwise…otherwise I don’t know who I am.”

“Mm.” Hitomi shoves fingers through her hair, like she’s trying to get that one lock to lie flat. It’s a new habit. Allen can’t tell whether he likes it. “What if she doesn’t need you, but still wants you, because she cares about you very much? Would that be as good?”

Allen freezes. And slowly lowers his head. “I don’t want to know what it says about me that my answer is no.”

Hitomi catches his hand in hers. Small, cold-fingered, insistent. “It says that you’re a little lost, and a little lonely, and you’ve been taking care of Celena to avoid having to think about anything else, especially about things with me and Millerna falling apart back then. Which I knew already. Allen…” She looks urgently up at him for a long moment, and then shakes her head slowly. “Believe in yourself too, all right? You’re a good person.”

“Hitomi…”

She’s silent for a long, long moment, turning to look into the moons in the sky, and finally asks, “Can you come with me tomorrow for a bit? There’s…there’s something I want to show you.”

“As you wish.”

 

* * *

 

In the morning, they get ready, although Hitomi won’t say where they’re going. And holds her hand up when Allen reaches for his sword belt. “You won’t need it.”

He frowns. “If there’s unexpected trouble—”

She taps a fingertip against the pendant. “We disappear. It’ll be okay. Trust me, this will be easier without that.”

Celena asks, and worries, and wants to come with them, and Allen feels some faint pang that she subsides without protest when Hitomi says she should stay behind, but it is what it is. They step out on the lawn, and Hitomi holds the pendant with one hand and offers the other out to him, and he fights the urge to bow his head to kiss it, and the light roars up around them and there’s that peculiar sensation of gut-churning weightlessness—

They’re in a forest. Deep, old forest, so thick he can barely see the sky. Life buzzes thick and wild around them. It’s cold, damp; his boots sink into the rich leaf litter, and Hitomi turns a little in place without letting go of his hand and breathes deep, blissful.

“Where are we?”

“Fanelia. The borderlands to the north, beyond what burned in the war.” She squeezes his hand, hoists her little bag up on her shoulders, and steps off through the woods; he follows, feeling rather unchivalrous to let her go first through the thick branches with her bare legs, but he does not know the way. She sets a comfortable, unflagging gait. He watches her thin, loose shirt bunch between her shoulderblades, and realizes, perhaps for the first time, how strong she must be. Little curves of muscle in her arms, subtle. One of the gentlest souls he’d ever known, but strong.

“You’re sure it’s safe here?” he asked eventually. “This is wild country.” Dragon lands, so the legends said. He wouldn’t have believed it if it weren’t for the dragonslaying rite both Folken and Van had undergone. But it would be insane, to go here unarmed. Perhaps Hitomi knew of some secret lying here…

“It’s safe. No matter what it seems like. That’s what I’m trying to show you.” She stops, and he almost runs into her. Turns her head a little, very still, and then turns with a smile bright as the sun, holding out her hand. “Do you trust me?”

He does not even know how to answer for a moment. Such a strange question for a woman to even ask. As if she was a comrade in arms, not—whatever she is to him. But she is Hitomi, and she keeps turning everything upside-down. “Yes.”

She takes his hand, and draws him up beside her, and they pass through a curtain of thick bushes, and the forest opens up. Old, old ruins. A half-toppled wall grown through with trees. Broken flagstones green with moss. He looks about in wonder.

A branch cracks, so thick a one that it echoes like thunder, and Allen jolts. They’re not alone after all.

“Hitomi—”

An earsplitting, guttural roar rings out, and Allen pulls hard on Hitomi’s hand, dragging her against his side. “Hitomi, we need to—!” He looks frantically about—how close is it? Here in this clearing, or stirring in the woods? The sound echoes so strangely that it’s hard to tell. How long—? His gut churns. To be unarmed, _here_ —not that a sword would save him, would it, no more than it would from Lig Vieta—

He is not accustomed to feeling helpless. It burns.

Hitomi says nothing, and he catches a glimpse of her face, and freezes. She’s—calm. Deadly calm. Squeezes his hand reassuringly.

Stones tumble, and crack underfoot, and the dragon slithers out from behind the ruined wall, and Allen grits his teeth against terror and tries to drag Hitomi backwards. The thing is _huge_ —for a moment, his mind jars to see a living creature so large. Savage, dirt brown, fat from prey. Its ripping roar opens its jaws wide, and spittle slides thick as old blood from its fangs, and Hitomi stands there as calmly as she’d stood in his living room before they left.

“ _Hitomi_!”

Has she gone mad? Is she trapped in a vision, unable to see what’s before her? Desperate, Allen bulls in front of her—if she won’t move, then he can at least distract it, give her a chance to run—

It lunges, neck snaking out, and Allen raises an arm and moves to shield her, and Hitomi calls out with no fear at all in her voice. “No, please!”

Her sneakers patter on the paving-stones, and he looks up in anguish to see her flinging herself in front of him in turn, arms spread wide, as if she could shield _him_ with her little body, and why, why does this keep happening? He has to keep them safe—

The world freezes.

He wonders, in some distant strange moment, if it is in shock. Or if this is a vision. Or if his final moments will last forever.

The gaping jaws frame Hitomi head to toe, and she doesn’t move, and her hands are open as if in offering, in peace.

They close, empty, and the creature rumbles, turns its head like a bird, stares straight at them with a huge sagging yellow eye. A mirror. Hitomi’s face is serene, her eyes unyielding. Allen has never seem mortal terror on his own face before, and it shakes him to his bones.

“The dragons are the epitome of Gaea,” she says quietly, at last. “Remember what Lig Vieta said?”

He stares into the dragon mirror like a wild man, and she raises her chin a little, and slowly, slowly he straightens, and rests a hand on her shoulder.

“You’re saying…”

“The dragons will reflect what you bring to them. Allen, do you wish to fight here?”

“No,” he croaks. “I didn’t—I didn’t think I had a choice.”

“Do you wish to die?” she asks, very quietly, and for a moment she doesn’t sound calm at all.

There’s a long, long silence, and the dragon leans a little closer with a creak like rusty gears, and he knows what the answer should be, but he cannot give it.

“I wish to protect you and Celena. Even with my life.”

The dragon snarls.

“Do you wish to live?” Hitomi whispers.

Her narrow tan shoulders are strong under his hands, and Celena is waiting, and the sun filtering through the leaves is very warm, and he remembers begging Balgus to kill him, and the terrible impassivity in the old dragon’s face.

“I don’t know.”

The mirror blinks, and for a moment, he thinks there is infinite starry space behind the dragon’s eye, and then it is gone, somewhere in the glimmering reflection of Hitomi’s eyes.

“I wish to try,” he says, at last.

The dragon gives one final, fading croak, and slides back behind the wall, and somehow, now, its giant footfalls seem light as feathers.

Hitomi lets out all her breath in a whoosh and sinks to her knees, and Allen gasps and catches her under the arms, following her down. “Hitomi—?”

“I’m fine, I’m fine. Whew! That might have been even scarier the second time.” She slumps back against him, breathing a little fast, and laughs a bit helplessly. “Okay, totally scarier. I’m okay. Allen, are you…?”

“I’m alive.” He resists the urge to bury his face in her hair. It’s free today, thin and straight to the nape of her neck, tangled from the wind of their travel. “Thanks to you.”

“I’m kind of also the one who put you in danger?” she burbles. “I’m sorry about that, but I wasn’t going to let anything happen, not _ever_. I just…hoped you’d understand. And you did. So!”

“Second time?” Allen asks, after what might perhaps be too long steadying her against him.

“Folken showed me. It was when I went to Fanelia with Van that one time…I think you were pretty upset.”

“Ah…sorry.”

“It’s okay.” She gets her feet under her, wriggling around to face him. “Allen, really. It’s okay. I…”

Her face crumples a little, and there’s a flush to her cheeks, and Allen manages to get halfway through her name before she ducks her head in and kisses him. One quick, soft peck, and he freezes with a little choking noise, and realizes that he’s let his manners get even more out of practice than his swordplay.

She pulls back, steadying herself with one hand on his shoulder, and the sinking doubt in her green eyes feels like a blade through his heart. “I…Allen…I’m sorry. You don’t need more of that in your life, if you don’t want…”

She stutters to a halt as he gently frames her cheek in his hand. His palm’s still damp with cold sweat, and they’re a tangle of legs on the ground, and instead of habit, it fees like raw, alien fumbling as he slides her fingers down to nudge her chin up, but her breath flutters and her lips part like it’s the most exquisite thing she’s ever felt, and this time, when he kisses her, it feels right. He hadn’t even realized, two years ago and soaked and mindless on that bridge, how hesitant her lips had been—even then, even aflutter for him. Now, now she makes some tiny, breathless little gasp, and presses herself against his chest, and opens for him eager as dawn, and teases him with her tongue, and they drown in it. He can feel his heart thundering in his chest, he can feel her squirm so she can get her arms around him with a heedless, earnest moan.

It ends mostly because she’s breathless, straight-up breathless, eyes sparkling and cheeks flushed and staring at him like he’s struck her to the heart.

“Allen…”

“I love you.” He doesn’t know just how true it is until he says it, and then it hits him like a hammer, and he pulls her close against her chest, wraps her up in his arms and tries not to shake. He hasn’t felt like this since—since nine years ago, in Marlene’s garden. Had he felt like this even then? _Could_ he even have, gangly stiff-backed boy, out of his depth and mad with lust?

“I love you too,” she whispers into the curtain of his hair, and for a moment, he’s so terrified he thinks the dragon might roar back to eat them both, but there’s only their heartbeats, and maybe those words won’t end everything after all.

 

* * *

 

They scamper back down through the woods, given dragons, and on some strange instinct he can’t even begin to parse, she deems it safe and spins around so she’s backing him into a tree, and kisses him like she’d eat his face off. He half-trips over a branch, staggers, lands with a thud against the tree and doesn’t even break it off. They eat his hair, and she breaks out laughing so brightly that it sends his clenching heart into double-time.

Somewhere amongst the tangle of limbs and kisses, he starts laughing too. And can’t stop. She’s carding fingers through his hair, not entirely gently, as if she’d spent two years wanting to sink her hands into it and has only now gotten the chance, and he can’t keep his hands off her. Can’t stop touching her face, feeling the heat of her flushed cheeks, feeling how she turns into it like a satisfied cat.

They make out like drunk teenagers, until Hitomi’s little white shirt is dangling from a branch and he’s mapping the wiry strength between her shoulderblades with his broad hands, the flat tautness of her stomach. Until she’s managed to burrow her way far enough into his uniform to get him mostly shirtless, and bent her head to kiss the puckered scar in his side from when he’d defended her on their journey to Freid, and whispered her thanks over and over again. Her knight. He would never let himself be anything else, not even to appease a dragon’s eye.

It rushes over them like a summer storm, and flickers to a halt as they still, in fact, find themselves in wild woods, and he smoothes a hand down the nape of her neck as she quivers. “Let me—let me do this right, Hitomi?”

“You mean like—in a bed, not with leaves up my butt?”

He snorts in spite of himself, and shakes his head a little. “That would not befit a lady, no.”

“I’m probably not a lady?” She blushes, giggles. She’s straddling his leg, and he can feel damp heat through his trousers. “But I like it when you treat me like one.”

He’s not even sure what face he’s making, but she’s flustered enough by the confession that she has to hide in his hair for a moment, and he tries to breathe normally, and realizes he’s got one leg on a burr-bush, and after that she concedes the point.

 

* * *

 

They find a burr-free place to sit, with good sun from a fallen tree, and calm themselves for a long while, and Hitomi settles behind him to carefully finger-comb out his hair and smooth it down for some _vague_ plausibility that they hadn’t been—necking, as she puts it.

“You really…can be here for the next few months?” he asks, eventually, and it’s that more than anything that dampens their lust.

“Yes. I’ll want to visit home occasionally, but…I sort of explained it all to my parents as best as I could. Granny helped. So they know I’m all right and that I’ll be back. And once I go to university, I’ll be able to visit more often without troubling them, since I’ll be living there and not at home.” She sighs, running palms over the length of his hair and making sure the top is fluffed up. “I…I know it’ll be hard for you. I won’t be leaving forever. Not until I’m old.”

“It’s…easier when I’m expecting it,” he says quietly. “Maybe. I don’t know. But I can’t…tie you down. I’ve learned that.”

She leans around to kiss his cheek, and the thanks she gives him is so heartfelt that he feels it in his toes.

 

* * *

 

They assemble themselves, and she holds out her hand again, and they rise in light, and this time it feels like flying. But when the light fades, they aren’t at the estate at all. They aren’t standing in rolling grass, but on smooth flagstones, and Allen turns a circle in shock and pulls Hitomi close to his side.

“ _Oh_ ,” Hitomi says, as if she’s realized just as quickly where they are. The great towers half-broken. _Freid_.

“We can’t be seen here,” Allen hisses, and ducks them both into an alcove. Hurriedly, he explains how tenuous things are for Chid, and then freezes halfway through with his stomach sinking to his toes, because a small, familiar voice is calling his name.

Chid is eight by now, taller, his blond hair grown out and tied up tightly in a knot under his tasseled helmet. Chid stands with his back rigid straight and his chin up and the knife at his belt his longer. Chid still wears his mother’s ring, no longer quite as huge on his hand. Chid is shocked to see them, and delighted, and runs himself into both their arms, and asks over and over if it’s really Hitomi, and Allen carefully, graciously disengages himself and manages to explain that they’ve come here by accident.

Chid understands how awkward it would be for Allen to be here, and they scurry through the blocky back hallways of the half-rebuilt palace until they find some secret place Chid has ferreted out with a child’s instincts. There, at least for a little while, they’re in private, and Chid and Hitomi catch up in hurried chatter. Allen—hadn’t quite realized, until now, how much Chid opens up to her. How warmly she supports him. His heart feels like it’s being pummeled.

“Allen,” Chid asks slowly, eventually, turning to him, and his little hands are tense fists in his lap. “I don’t…I don’t know if this is a question I should ask, but some people have been saying strange things.” He can hear the similarity between Chid’s voice and Celena’s, when the boy hesitates. He can hardly breathe with fear, and Hitomi’s hand settles on his arm, as if to lend him strength. “Are you my father?”

It. _Almost_ doesn’t surprise him. Allen closes his eyes for a moment, winded.

“The Duke,” he says, slowly, “believed you were his son. Fervently, to the last. I do not know whether he was truly unaware, or whether he chose to believe in you, and in your mother, and unwaveringly acknowledge you as his regardless. But either way, I cannot and will not deny the faith he placed in you, and I beg you not to do so either.”

Chid gives him a long, long look, his lower lip trembling a little, and then nods, tassel jumping. “I would not be the Duke of Freid if I was not his son. I understand. But…”

For a moment, he is silent. For a moment, Allen worries that he’s going to weep—and instead, he flings himself at Allen again, piles his small body into his lap, and Hitomi whispers that it’s all right, and Allen wraps trembling arms around his son. Chid’s helmet slips aside, dislodged by him jamming his face into Allen’s shoulder, and Allen rests his forehead against his tight little blond topknot, and Hitomi wraps her arms around them both.

 

* * *

 

It’s a long hour or three talking in Freid, and in the end, they only leave because dusk is close and Allen is worried that Celena will miss them if they stay the night, and Chid holds his sleeve very tight in a small shaking hand and makes him swear that he’ll visit again.

As their feet settle on the estate’s lawn and the beam of light fades again, a wild wind whips up around them, and Allen shakes a cloud of hair out of his face and spins in alarm.

The guiding propellers of the _Crusade_ lock up into landing position as she settles on the rolling grass, and Allen feels his mouth fall open as the hatch opens and Gaddes sticks his head out, grinning. And then Celena follows him, grinning even wider. She’s wearing riding trousers like Millerna’s, Ezgardian style, with a soft and very girly white tunic with lace up to her chin, sleeveless. Her growing mop of hair is tied back with a ribbon, and the practice sword from earlier is strapped around her waist, and she skips off the _Crusade_ wide-eyed in wonder. “That was _fun_!”

Gaddes strides out, arms folded, with a particular look of mischief that Allen can’t quite place. “So, Chief, what’s this about you going on some grand quest to become a Master Swordsman of Gaea?”

Allen opens his mouth, closes it, holds up a finger, and looks to Celena. “ _What_ did you tell him?”

“The truuuth?”

“Even if I was ready, by whatever measure that Doppleganger was using—”

“You are!” says Hitomi. “What do you think we were just doing?”

“—I couldn’t _possibly_ prioritize such a thing over taking care of you—”

“I’ll come with you.”

Allen stalls out. “Celena…”

“You think _I_ want to hold you back? You think I’d want that for you, Brother? I love you. I’m tired of watching you just sitting around being stifled all the time. _I’m_ tired of sitting around all the time. Come on!”

She grabs his hand and tugs, and Allen stays rooted to the spot for a moment, fishmouthing, before looking over to Gaddes. “ _Even_ with that, need I remind you that despite all our shenanigans during the war, the _Crusade_ is under Asturian military jurisdiction, I am still under appointment as a Knight Caeli, and I should be writing you all up for dereliction of duty right now?”

Gaddes laces his hands behind his head and whistles. “So about that? Their Royal Highnesses send their blessing upon this expedition. I think their exact words might have been “needs some fresh air” and “finally taking up the family tradition of exploration, sweet dragons yes, you’d better tell me all about it!” He even stuck us with one of those new-fangled skiagram machines. We’re supposed to take a million pictures, assuming any of us can figure out how to work it. Besides, if you come home a Master Swordsman, all of Asturia is going to be tickled pink about _that_ , including the crown.” He shrugs. “But hey, your call, Chief.”

Allen looks around at all of them, stunned. Gaddes grinning, smug as a fox. Celena hanging off his arm with a _come oooooooooon!_ worthy of her four-year-old self. Hitomi laughing, holding up two fingers in a V. “I’ll be your camera crew! I can’t stay forever, but I’ve missed Gaea. And you.”

With that, she plants a kiss on his cheek, to the tune of a few hoots from the _Crusade_.

Infected wounds don’t usually heal this fast.

Allen feels a smile cracking his face, so wide it almost hurts. Like the sun has come out, deep down. Like two gears inside him have finally meshed.

He sweeps Celena and Hitomi up, one under each arm, and bundles them laughing onto the _Crusade_ ’s boarding ramp, and Gaddes’ whoop raises a cheer from the crew, and everything he is, finally, feels right.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is an oddly personal author's note, but Overlimits: I want to thank you for the chance to write this. Escaflowne was my first anime fandom, about half my life ago, and it's persisted; I've seen the show countless times, have tons of feels and headcanons, and even written a fan-LARP about it, but barely ever managed to finish fic about it. And I admit that I've always had pretty strong opinions about why Allen and Hitomi wouldn't be a good match, and saw this request as a challenge: to carry through Allen's character development to a point where I *could* believe in them, and then I had a lot of feelings about that because I have a lot of feelings about Allen's arc and development, and then it got very long. At any rate, I hope you like it, despite the fact that it was written by a non-shipper.
> 
> For anyone else who is wondering: I did write this under my personal assumption that Van and Hitomi have an open relationship, I just left it unstated by recipient's request. The existence and names of the other two Master Swordsmen of Gaea come from supplementary canon, because I am a large Escaflowne nerd.


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